9-3-2011

This guy isn't just a street musician on the metro. He's a cutthroat business man who wanted change for pictures, then demanded bigger dominations than the coins I gave him. In fairness, I probably only gave him like four cents at first. I'm not sure it was worth it.

Nicole and I have a collection of photobooth pictures of us from different places we go. I'm starting to collect pictures of the photobooths where we take the photobooth pictures for our collection.

Hey look, it's The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! I'm not sure who this guy is or if he's been inducted or not. This reminds me of old spy movies. The Louvre is pretty much art overload like a shower 1,000 art history books all falling on you all at once. Before totally blacking out, I took pictures of winged sculptures that I remember from classes like Cupid and Psyche and the Nike mascot. I try not to take too many pictures in museums, because it pretty much defeats the purpose of seeing these masterworks in real life if you're only viewing them though a tiny screen and not really looking at them for real. Art overload causes craziness. My eyes were popping out of the back of my head and people looked like they were made out of vegetables. Nicole started making oaths with Horatii until she passed out from art exhaustion. At least she had a nice ceiling to wake up to. This picture reminds me of being in school. I miss those times.

This is the Jardin des Tuileries. It was nice seeing a bit of nature in all the buildings. Nicole and I like walking around trees. I also liked this antique looking Bentley and this quiche lorraine from a cafe. Nicole likes French fries and ham. Not everyone looks cool on a Vespa. Paris is so fancy. I already miss just randomly seeing buildings like that on every other corner. Of course I already miss the food as well. And not having to drive and just taking the Metro everywhere. This French lady followed me back to the hotel. Nicole chased French cats whenever she saw them.

9-2-2011

This whole trip, we walked miles and miles every day. Mostly in search of food. Somehow I totally flaked though and didn't take any pictures of the miles and miles of train ride we took to visit this guy at his house. He has the fanciest house I'll ever see in my whole life. Here's a picture of me trying to get in. I like looking at details. There's a lot of punch you in the face spectacle there though and lots of really nice views. It's just room after room of opulent craziness. The opulent is the decor and architecture, the craziness is the tourist (who apparently want to murder me). Hi! I might do this to our ceiling. Nicole called this the "Wall of Mirrors" (bears are allowed to be one letter off). Windows. Here's another mandatory tourist shot. For some reason, the fountains were all off, but these guys were cool. We took long walks in the woods to see this little tiny house. Nicole was happy we finally made it. This is the kind of stuff I have tattooed on me but for real. I would probably get this tattooed on me. This is a royal potty. It's very minimal. I gave Nicole a flower as we were leaving.

Hey look, it's another high school French class thing! This is a croque madame. It's like a French grilled cheese sandwich with ham and an egg on top. They made mine doubly unhealthy since they knew I would like that. We ate these before going shopping at super fancy Pretemps. Then we ate mousse.

At night, we heard noisy punk-ish sounding music coming up into our hotel room. Clearly, this is pertinent to my interests, so we went searching for the source of such noise. There was a band randomly playing in the street in front of some cafes for people like this to listen to. In case the audience wasn't entertained enough by the music, screaming guy decided to transform into screaming naked guy. This guy loved taking cellphone pictures of screaming naked guy. We think that this is screaming naked guy's girlfriend. She was getting tanked and dancing in the street. I don't know how we always end up at places like this no matter where we go, but I like it.

After we had enough screaming and naked, we went to eat couscous down the street. Couscous is a big deal in Paris I guess, since there are a lot of Algerian and Moroccan immigrants and immigrants always make the best authentic food. This is the only meal I ate the entire time I was in Paris where I was painfully full afterward.

9-1-2011

So clearly, we're really into eating crepes. Well, the internet tells me that crepes are really from Brittany in the northwest of France not Paris, and many people from this area take the train to the Gare Montparnasse by where we are staying. As a result, this area has the most and best variety of crepe places and types of crepes. Those are breakfast crepes. After shopping around and looking at mushrooms for a while, we were ready for another place to have lunch crepes from this creperie.

Here's some random stuff...we saw fashionable people, we want to be friends with pizza cat, Nicole is scared of robot bathrooms, more fancy gates.

My mom would be really happy with how many times we went to church on this trip. I would probably be more inclined to go to church more often if they had fancy ceilings like this that I could stare at when I was bored. These windows wouldn't hurt to look at either. I really like old religious things. I think they're really pretty. This is back outside again. There was so much detail in all the sculpture around the outside of the building that We just sat and stared at it. It's all very hard to picture. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't see the Hunchback.

More street picture time...the Seine is still romantical, very romantical but also good for working on your tan. I really liked how the street vendors that sold the touristy stuff looked. I probably looked like this. I wish I looked like this. I like people pictures. Nicole and I went to sit by the river but found out that in addition to being romantical, it also smells like pee. At least it looks nice in pictures. Something that would look nice in pictures is the inside of the Musee d'Orsay, but they don't let you take pictures. You can always Google image search for "Bouguereau" and see the paintings that I like.

The street lets you take pictures, so here's a picture of meat, Nicole with a baguette de tradition française, foreshadowing for when we get to London, and a fromagerie where I managed to speak enough French to buy something (this was a major accomplishment). This is delicious dinner for the night.

8-31-2011

Stairs are the theme of today. Those are the ones from the hotel, but we went up and down over two hundred stairs to visit the catacombs. I've wanted to go here every since I first heard about/saw pictures of this place when I was a kid. There are literally walls of bones all though miles worth of tunnels that date back a very long time. I guess there six million people's remains though the whole thing. It's really amazing and surreal to see in real life. Here are some other interesting parts that weren't bones.

When we resurfaced, we went to sit at a cafe and look at people. I think Paris is a pretty great place for people watching. This lady is wearing a dress on a scooter. Then we did some window shopping and more people watching and more window shopping. This A.P.C. is on the "Rue Madame" that they put on all of their labels.

Like the catacombs, I've wanted to a creperie in Paris as a destination for a long time. This was the first crepe of the trip, and it was very good. I kind of wish I had one right now as I'm typing this. Nicole drinks a lot of tiny coffee. I bet she wishes she had one right now as I'm typing this.

Look, it's night time now. Night time is a good time to visit the Eiffle Tower. I know for sure that there's a law that every tourist must take a picture of themselves in front of it. The tower turns on its sparkles when Nicole puts her arms in the air (really it did). This shot is pretty obligatory as well. The thing that sucks about pictures is that they're never as cool as seeing something in real life. So here are a few pictures to help remember what it was like looking at the real thing, but it's nothing like actually seeing stuff like this and this in person. One nice thing about pictures is that that they're free, so I can steal shots of the gift shop (even though I got yelled at for it) and get the overpriced kitschy souvenirs without paying for them. Don't look down.

After looking around at everything at the tower, we started to go home as the cafes were closing. Crepe stands stay open later than cafes, and any time is a good time to eat crepes. To wash down the crepes, we got an Orangina. This drink is a word that they taught us about in my high school French class that I never though would actually matter in my life. I pretty much though that about my entire high school French class actually. Boy was I wrong. By this point, I was really wishing that I had paid better attention. I feel it necessary to publicly thank my teacher for the little bits of French that did stick in my brain though, because that's pretty much the only way I was able to do anything out here at all.

8-30-2011

These traveling posts are going to be very long and very scattered. I'm sorry in advance. I took way too many pictures.

This is this view from the back of our hotel. Nicole kept looking back there for French alley cats, but she never saw one.

This is an art nouveau metro sign. I think its cool that such an iconic decorative style is still being used for utilitarian purposes. Old people just like to make out under them.

My preconception of Paris mostly comes from the movie Amelie (and Warner Brothers cartoons about skunks), so I was excited to find the apartment and market from the movie in real life. As you can tell, it was closed. It was ok though, since the movie was set in Montmartre, an area historically known as the home of many famous artist, writers and musicians, and we somehow ended up in an area specializing in fabrics. So I was content to wander around here anyway. One thing that was open however was the cafe that Amelie worked at. They serve cheese and coffee.

Montmartre is also the home of a French national treasure and major tourist attraction not to be missed. The A.P.C. Surplus store. The store wasn't open yet when we got there though, so went to go look at some old church on a hill to kill time while we waited. This guy lives on the cathedral. This guy has a sacred heart. They all hangout together outside. It's really fancy inside. It's nice to look at.

We wandered some more and found a park, the exact opposite of a cathedral, and another famous place (which has been forever ruined in my mind by Christia Aguilera).

This statue is at the Cimetiere de Montmartre. I really liked seeing these dates and imagining there was some old lady out there that refuses to die even though she's outlived her expected century. Keep going, old lady.

There's so much fancy stuff everywhere that I forgot where I saw this monument, but it was on the way to the Champs-Elysees. I'm pretty sure there's a law that every tourist with a camera is require to take this picture. Look at these fancy gates and long line of people waiting to enter the ornate door. It must be some sort of museum right? Nope, that's just the fanciest Abercrombie & Fitch store on the planet. I guess I can't complain much, because I went half way around the world and was really excited to visit the Nike store to look at running stuff. While we're on the topic of American establishments corrupting the world, I had it on good autority that the McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees was a necessary stop for the people watching. It is. Also interesting for people watching (and America ruining the world) were the street performers that confuse Paris with the Brox in the 70's. It's pretty much understood that tourists love seeing upside down street performers though. Here's something equally touristy, but decidely French. It's Laduree, the super fancy and world famous patisserie that people come from all over the place buy cookies at. Don't get me wrong, it's totally worth going there to buy cookies. They invented double-decker macaroons which are pretty much the things I'll miss most from Paris. That and the architecture. Totally unrelated, Nicole's fancy coffee robot is apprently super popular in Europe. They have entire stores all over the place there for people to buy their capsules (Nicole has to order hers from the internet). Speaking of Nicole, she was too much of a giant to fit through the Arc de Triopmhe. This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and these soldiers were coming to make sure it was ok. This guy was not ok. I like taking people pictures when I go places because people are almost always more interesting to look at than places. Here are a few random people that I photographed. I like to take natural and unposed shots of people, but this guy looked unnatural and posed even though he wasnt. Places are intersting to look at too when they're as fancy as this or this.

This place was very high on my list of interesting things to see. They specialize in taxedermey and strange stuff and have been around forever, but they were closed since we got there around dinner time.

Since it was dinner time, we decided to have our one planned fancy dinner of the trip at a fancy place. This fancy place is famous because it's been around for ever and ever, and lots of writers and artists hung out there. It's so fancy that I didn't feel comfortable picturing all of our food, but I promise it was very pretty and delicious. This dessert was too pretty and delicious not to picture. Speaking of fancy, here's a picture of our rental car in front of the restaurant.

8-29-2011

We made it and we're alive. We even managed to make it though customs, and I stumbled though enough broken-highschool-level-French to get us through the train station to our hotel (this is a much bigger deal than I care to explain). More importantly, our hotel is above a boulangerie which bakes croissants and pain au chocolat. I would be totally fine with spending all my moneys on pasteries.

After carbing up, we were generously tour guided around by Nicole's relatives. I though it would be mostly rude to shove a camera in their faces though, so I shoved my camera in stranger's and local dog's faces instead. Walking along the Seine is supposed to be romantical. That's not New York in the background. Paris has a smaller Statue of Liberty replica (or Statue of Anarchy) like the one in New York. Paris also has a larger replica of the Eiffel Tower like the one in Las Vegas. I was interested to see that these people live in tents along the river. I was also interested to see this woman at all.

Beyond showing us where not to get robbed, Nicole's family also was nice enough to cook us a real French meal for dinner. This is Raclette. It's named after a type of cheese and is delicious. You can read about it on Wikipedia. This is wine. That's on Wikipedia too.

8-28-2011

Nicole and I like French things. Like French toast and French fries. It's only logical then that we should wait around in an airport for airplanes, so we can get on one and fly to France. Actually, it took more than just one plane and a very very long time. It took all day and all night and past bedtime.

8-27-2011

Sienna says that we can't go anywhere without our bags.

8-26-2011

8-25-2011

Panic! Chaos!! Call the S.W.A.T. team!!! It's been four years and Nicole hasn't gotten rid of me yet. To celebrate, Nicole got me a new car, and I got her fancy drinks and a ton of food. No, seriously...so much food. Enough food that they made their own secret society. This is the fanciest, most expensive corndog ever. We didn't like it nearly as much as this crème brûlée. Happy bananaversary, Nicole!

8-24-2011

This is exactly what it looks like, and I don't care and I'm not sorry. It was amazing. I'm not sorry for taking this picture of this guy either because he looks amazing.

8-23-2011

It's exciting to me that these still exist in the world. I'll be even more excited to see what comes back.

8-22-2011

So a while ago, Nicole and I got a hummingbird feeder. I've tried a few times, but never had any luck getting pictures of the quick little guys. I must have been extra bored, because I actually sat and waited there long enough to get some pictures of their dinner time tonight.

Speaking of dinner time, I'm making funny faces in my kitchen again. Honestly, that can mean any number of things, but in this case it means I'm being stupid and eating my peppers raw again. After all the time and work I went though to grow fresh ones, I feel like it's important to try them like this to really experience the experience. Nicole has no desire to do this, so I "cooked" again too. These are not carrots. This is what I made for dinner.

8-21-2011

With all my focus on cameras this weekend, I figured it would only be right to break out one of my favorites and shoot some real film. Hopefully I'll update this post when I get things developed. Until then, you can look at this and think about all the tacos I've been eating every meal for the past three days

So I got my film back and I'm really excited about it. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post all of the shots (including me making dumb faces) because 1) I like how they came out, and 2) they were expensive to develop.

Kodak Ektachrome 100, over exposed at ~50 and cross processed:
Train
I have no idea what this end to end said
Confetti
Taco Time
People
Yo, girl
Legal wallz
Poser graffiti
Leica
Graffiti girlfriend chairs
R.I.P.
Polaroid

Kodak Ektachrome 200, over exposed at ~100 and cross processed:
Model face
Shadow
More shadow
Yo, girl
Coloring wall
Who tied me here?
Watching you watching people
It's true
Yo, girl
Model face
Urban Oufitters model face
Big homie, painting on a tiny train